Orange: price increases go down very badly with customers

© Orange

This is a very poorly accepted price increase. While subscribers to Orange's Open offer (which combines fixed Internet and mobile plan) received an e-mail informing them of an upcoming increase, discontent is growing among the latter. As always, the operator offers an improvement in the package (more GB each month) against an increase of 2 euros. The customer has the option to refuse, but in the absence of a response from them, the change is effective.

Respired subscribers

The UFC-Que Choisir association announces in an article published on its website that it has received around sixty complaint messages in a few weeks from Orange subscribers who denounce these increases. Worse, when some of them were unable to connect to their customer areas, they had to go directly to the store, which turned out to be a very unpleasant waste of time. Finally, consumers claim to have suffered the increase despite their refusal.

Unfortunately, the association explains that it cannot intervene on these issues. Under article L.224-33 of the Consumer Code, operators can indeed proceed with these price increases provided they inform their customers at least one month in advance to let them cancel without charge. within 4 months following notification. If this provision is therefore perfectly legal, this does not prevent the subscribers concerned from being rightly moved by it.

This is not the first time that Orange customers have expressed their dissatisfaction. In 2023, Christel Heydemann, the new CEO of Orange, assumed these increases which were, according to her, necessary: ​​“The recent price changes which will be fully effective from the second quarter will gradually fuel the growth of retail services”.

Free chooses a different strategy

Other operators, on the contrary, make different commercial choices. This is the case of Free which promised this year that it will not increase the price of its two mobile plans until 2027. Remember that these two subscriptions will therefore remain billed at prices of 2 euros and 20 euros, amounts unchanged since their launch in 2012.

This very aggressive pricing strategy seems to benefit Xavier Niel's firm. Free Mobile has gained 1.5 million additional subscribers over the past year, for around 15 million in total. At the same time, all its French rivals have increased their prices to cope with inflation.

What to remember:

• The price increases for Orange's Open offer are going badly
• The UFC-Que Choisir received around sixty messages on this subject in a few weeks
• Not all operators make this choice

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